Page 34 of Midnight Surrounds Us

Barking laughter erupted from my mouth. I couldn’t help it. “Oh my God.”

“Yeah. So I stopped by your house after I told him I’d haul his ass to jail if he did it, once I figured out what I could arrest him for, but you weren’t there so I had no one to commiserate with.”

“Sorry.”

Her head cocked to the side. “You still haven’t said where you were.”

“Out.”

She scoffed. “Right. Without me? You don’t go ‘out.’”

“Well, I did last night. Had a great time.”

Her eyes narrowed in suspicion. She was either mad that I hadn’t dished the dirt yet, or she was miffed I’d spent time with another friend. Or both. “With who?”

I bit the inside of my cheek so I wouldn’t be tempted to tattle on myself.

“Aubrey?”

“Um…”

She gasped, and her eyes grew to the size of golf balls. “Rye? You went out with Rye, didn’t you? I flippin’ knew it! Tell meeverything.”

Peeking out the front window, I made sure there were no customers coming in, and then I pulled Roxi by her hand to the safety of the back room and spilled all the tea on planet Earth.

“You won’t believe it, Roxi. Juneau was right! He showed up here yesterday after book club. I was on the phone with my mom. That’s not important, although, did I tell you my parents are goin’ on a cruise? Lucky bastards. Anyway, there he was right in front of me, and he told me he could help me with my little problem. You know how I was stressin’ big time about my taxes?”

She nodded silently, but there was a little sparkle in her eye.

“Oh wait. Of course you do. You’re the unloyal friend who told him!”

She winced.

“I should probably be thankin’ you, but I still wanna clobber you.”

She batted her coated eyelashes at me, smirking and shrugging. Her face was so expressive, there really was no need for her to speak.

“Anyway, so he says, ‘I got money. I can help you and you can help me. I’ll take you to Paris,’ like it’s nothin’ to him, and then he pulled up his bank account on his phone.

“The man is rich. Like, not, ‘hey, I just got paid, let’s go tuck back a couple ribeyes’ kind of rich, but, like, loaded rich. And then he paid my back taxes. All he says he wants in return is me to fake date him so his parents will get off his back about his love life. So I said yes.

“And then he— Oh, Roxi. The things he did to me. We didn’t even have sex, and I orgasmed four times!”

Trying to recover from my nearly hysterical monologue, Roxi shook her head quickly and pieces of her hair fell loose from the bun she’d put it into this morning. “I’m sorry. I think I hallucinated the last part. Please repeat.”

“Yeah. In the bed of his truck on the side of Highway 10, up past Cade Ranch at the Stillwater Pass lookout, you know the little spot in the parkin’ area that’s kinda hidden at the edge?”

She nodded. “Holy. Shit. But I mean, what did you do if you didn’t have sex? I had no clue my intervention would lead tothat!”

My cheeks must’ve lit up like glowing brake lights because Roxi’s eyes got even bigger.

“Tell me right now.”

“He— I— We… did things.” I bit my lip. “Really dirty, naughty things.”

She squealed so loud, I thought my eardrums might pop. “And which of that delicious man’s body parts did he do things to you with?”

I whispered because I was so embarrassed, I couldn’t say any of it out loud. “His fingers. And his mouth. Specifically, his tongue.God, that man’s tongue.”

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